Dow Chemical Company

The Dow Chemical Company is a lead producer of plastics, chemicals, hydrocarbons, and agrochemicals. It is the largest chemical company in the U.S. and the second largest in the world. (ahead of ExxonMobil and behind BASF). Dow also makes performance plastics; including engineering plastics, polyurethanes and materials for Dow Automotive. Other products include packaging materials such as its Styrofoam brand insulation; fibers and films. It also makes performance chemicals like acrylic acid; commodity chemicals (chlor-alkalies and glycol) and agrochemicals. Its Hydrocarbons and Energy unit makes olefins and aromatics, raw materials for other chemicals. Dow also owns half of silicone products maker Dow Corning.

Dow subsidiary Union Carbide, was involved in the Bhopal, India later in asbestos lawsuits.

Animal testing
Dow does animal testing.

Facility information, progress reports & USDA-APHIS reports
For links to copies of a facility's U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-Animal Plant Health Inspection (APHIS) reports, other information and links, see also Stop Animal Experimentation NOW!: Facility Reports and Information. This site contains listings for all 50 states, links to biomedical research facilities in that state and PDF copies of government documents where facilities must report their animal usage. (Search: Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Michigan; Dow Corning Corporation, Auburn, Michigan.)

USDA AWA reports
As of May 26, 2009, the USDA began posting all inspection reports for animal breeders, dealers, exhibitors, handlers, research facilities and animal carriers by state. See also USDA Animal Welfare Inspection Reports.

Contract testing
Dow contract tests out to Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). Huntingdon Life Sciences is the 3rd largest contract research organization (CRO) in the world and the largest animal testing facility in all of Europe. Firms hire CROs to conduct animal toxicity tests for agrochemicals, petrochemicals, household products, pharmaceutical drugs and toxins. HLS has a long history of gross animal welfare violations. See also Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Environment
In October 2007, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave Dow 60 days (until December 10, 2007) to present the agency with "a good faith offer demonstrating its willingness to conduct or finance a remedial investigation and feasibility study and design a remedy" for dioxin contamination of the Tittabawassee River, and perhaps the Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay areas of Michigan.

Air pollution
Dow ranked number 11 in the Political Economy Research Institute's top 100 air polluters in the U.S. for 2002.

Bisphenol-A
Dow Chemical is one of the leading manufacturers of Bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical that is used in the making of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. Recent studies have shown that the BPA in common consumer products is leading to many serious diseases, even at a low level. Some such diseases are infertility, obesity, breast and prostate cancer, diabetes, thyroid malfunction, and attention deficit syndrome. Recent studies have also found links to genetic problems leading to chromosome abnormalities which can lead to miscarriages, Down's syndrome, and Turner syndrome, among other serious conditions. Some common products containing Bisphenol-A include household appliance parts, compact discs, sunglasses, eating utensils, paints, and reusable bottles. See also extensive list at [http://www.foe.org.au/resources/publications/chemicals/Bisphenol%20A%20in%20plastics%20consumer%20guide%20oz%20v1.pdf Bisphenol A in plastics - does it make us sick? A consumer guide]

Chlorpyrifos
First used as a nerve gas in World War II, chlorpyrifos have most recently been used as indoor and outdoor pesticides. In 1963 Dow AgroSciences began manufacturing chlorpyrifos under the name Dursban, a product mainly used as a means of controlling cockroach populations in homes. Dursban was banned by the EPA in 2000, citing it as a neurological toxin that was unsafe to children's health. It was the third organophosphate that the EPA banned from consumer use The chemical was only banned from over-the-counter products; farmers still had access to the pesticide for their crops. This product, labeled Lorsban by Dow, is just as toxic and is having adverse health effects on farmers and their children around the world. Because pesticide use is not legally required to be reported, chlorpyrifos continues to be used without being federally monitored.

In effort to prove that their chemical does not have the extreme impacts on children, they have performed unethical tests and hidden the results from consumers. According to Dow, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s report that 92% of children and 82% of adults showed traces of the chemical has a "tremendous number of errors and omissions". In 2003, Dow was sued by the Attorney General of New York resulting in payments of $2 million dollars for advertising their product as safe, 8 years after a $732,000 fine for failing to report results of toxicity studies of their products to the EPA. They have also done human testing on 60 paid people in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1998, paying them to swallow the tablets covered in chlorpyrifos.

Health effects

 * blurred vision
 * fatigue
 * muscle weakness
 * memory loss
 * carcinogenicity
 * reproductive/developmental problems
 * birth defects

Bhopal, India
The night of December 3, 1984 is the night thousands remember as the beginning of a catastrophe that has still not found peace. That night, thousands suffocated on the 27 tons of methyl isocyanate that leaked out of Union Carbide’s pesticides plant and filled the city of Bhopal, India with a white cloud of smoke that was impossible to run from. At least 3,000 people were killed that night, several thousand more in the following nights, and yet more in the years to come. Twenty-five years later, the chemicals from the abandoned factory continue to seep into the ground and poison survivors and their children. It has been claimed that it is the “unlucky” ones who survived that night and must suffer every day from the disabilities and contaminated drinking water.

The fight for justice and compensation has been long and hard. In 2001 Dow Chemical inherited the liabilities when it purchased Union Carbide. Union Carbide left the factory desolate and destroyed, ignoring their lease agreement with the state of Madhya Pradesh, that the land, when returned, be in a ‘habitable and usable condition.’. Dow ignored the Polluter Pays principle, claiming that the Madhya Pradesh government should pay for the clean up. The company asserts that the $300 million in compensation paid by Union Carbide in 1989, should be funneled into cleanup efforts, rather than to affected individuals; ultimately forcing the survivors to pay for the chemical clean up. The catastrophe continues today.

Napalm
During the Vietnam War, Dow encountered boycotts against its end-consumer products because of its manufacture of napalm. ZNet has this to say about Dow:


 * "Saran Wrap -The thin slice of plastic invaluable to our lives. Produced by Dow until consumers were looking for Dow products to boycott.  Dow decided to get out of consumer products for this reason -- they sold off Saran Wrap -- and since just makes chemicals that make our consumer products., ,

Purchasing agreement for gasified coal
On April 27, 2009 Dow & GreatPoint Energy (a coal gasification company) signed an agreement that gives Dow the option to buy GreatPoint's gasified coal if the company reaches the commercial level. If the two companies do decide to do business with each other, they will enter into a fifteen-year contract and Dow will buy gas from GreatPoint's first three commercial plants. The press release states: "Dow is one of the country’s largest industrial users of natural gas and has over thirty years of gasification experience, having developed its own gasification technology, known as E-gas, and extensive chemical industry processing and technology scale-up experience… Daniel Goldman, GreatPoint Energy’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, who led the negotiations with Dow, commented, “having Dow as a potential major purchaser of natural gas further validates our technology and enables financing structures that will reduce our cost of production." GreatPoint Energy CEO Andrew Perlman stated, “This potential gas agreement will also enable us to move forward with the development of large scale facilities in North America.”

In 2007, Dow worked with Citi Sustainable Development Investments, The AES Corp., and Suncor Energy, Inc. to put together a $100 million investment for GreatPoint Energy. The investment was used to create a pilot gasification plant called the Mayflower Clean Energy Center, located at Dominion's Brayton Point station in Somerset, Massachusetts. This was the largest "green tech" investment of 2007, and "one of the industry's biggest venture capital rounds ever."

Political contributions
Dow gave $498,006 to federal candidates in the 2008 election cycle through its political action committee - 44% to Democrats and 56% to Republicans.

Lobbying
Dow Chemical and subsidiary Dow AgroSciences spent a combined total of $6,640,000 on lobbying in 2009. $1,870,000 went to 8 outside firms for the parent company; $120,000 went to one outside firm for the subsidiary and the remaining amount was spent on in-house lobbying.

Key executives

 * Andrew N. Liveris - Chairman, President & CEO
 * William Weideman - Executive VP & CFO
 * David Kepler- Executive VP, Business Services, Chief Sustainability Officer & CIO

Key executives and 2006 pay

 * Andrew N. Liveris - $16,821,542
 * Geoffery E. Merszei - CFO, $7,222,491
 * David E. Kepler - $4,289,395

Selected board members

 * James A. Bell - CFO, Boeing Company
 * Jeff M. Fettig - Chairman & CEO, Whirlpool Corporation
 * Barbara Hackman Franklin - Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce under George H. W. Bush
 * Paul G. Stern - Director, Whirlpool Corporation, Member, Council on Foreign Relations

Contact
2030 Dow Center Midland, Michigan 48674

Phone: (989) 636-1000

Fax: (989) 832-1556

Web address: http://www.dow.com

http://www.biodegradables.com

SourceWatch articles

 * Animal testing
 * Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth
 * Chemical industry
 * Community Advisory Panels
 * Community Advisory Panels: Corporate cat-herding
 * Dow Corning
 * Huntingdon Life Sciences
 * Michael Parker - former president
 * Pedro A. Freyre
 * Peter Sandman
 * Precautionary principle
 * Responsible Care - The chemical industry's sham "self-regulation" effort. Chemical accidents actually increased in number after the initiation of this program designed to help the Chemical industry avoid government regulation.

External articles

 * "Dow, Monsanto Ordered To Pay $62M Over Agent Orange", Associated Press, January 26, 2006

External resources

 * Basic history of Napalm.
 * The Bhopal Medical Appeal & Sambhavna Clinic, Bhopal
 * International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal
 * Students for Bhopal
 * The Truth About Dow
 * Dow Chemical Consumer Campaign by Beyond Pesticides
 * The Dow Chemical Company's Website - the latest company written news, PR and information about all of Dows various products and subsidiaries.
 * Dow History as written by Dow
 * Dow Chemical Corporate News & Information

Books

 * Alastair Hay, The Chemical Scythe: Lessons of 2, 4, 5, 6 and Dioxin, Kluwer Academic Publishers, September 1982, ISBN 0306409739
 * Jack Doyle Tresspass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century, Common Courage Press, April 1, 2004, ISBN 978-1567512687